The Generations Trio came into existence out of a great love....love that three musicians felt when they made music together. This was in spite of the fact that they had diverse backgrounds, were from different generations, there being more than a 50 year difference in ages between the youngest member and the ......the most mature, and often finding themselves faced with distance problems as their homes were thousands of miles apart. But they all loved sharing great music with others and the special feeling and the magic that seemed to occur when they performed made it easy for them to decide to form the Generations Trio.

"I am John Sant'Ambrogio, retired Principal cellist of the St. Louis Symphony orchestra and father of the cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio of the renowned Eroica Trio. Recently I have formed the Generations Trio together with pianist Judy Lynn Stillman and violinist Dimitri Pogorelov.

Our vision is to inspire and educate audiences by presenting programs that feature great compositions of all genres while demonstrating the unique joy of experiencing music that results from talented musicians of very different generations working together. To quote Esa-Pekka Salonen, the amazing young conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "We are presenting old works in new light, new works in new contexts." We would like to be audience builders, and we have found that young adults with little concert-going experience as well as the sophisticated listeners have enjoyed our performances. We are beginning short residencies at colleges where we play a concert or two and then devote the rest of our time to giving master classes. We will be at Ohio University at Athens this coming season. We would also enjoy doing special youth concerts and evenings of demonstrations along with any concert that we might do on your series.

We're different than most classical piano trios. Judy (www.judithlynnstillman.com) and Dmitri (www.dmitripogorelov.com) are two of the best and most fun musicians with whom I've ever played. Something magical happens when we get together. We're close friends, like family. We comprise three generations. There is a 50 year difference in age between Dmitri and me, yet he often leads us. We've achieved recognition (one of the ten best concerts in Ohio Critic's award) in the two short years we've performed together.

After meeting and playing a couple of concerts together at the Lancaster Music Festival, Dmitri, who is Russian, and Judy, who lives in Rhode Island, urged me, living in Colorado, to look for opportunities for us to get together and begin performing throughout the United States. Of course we play the standard repertoire in the standard format, but we also do something different which seems to thrill our audiences. For example, one program is called From Ramaeu to Ragtime (a non-professional DVD is available of an informal concert where we use this approach).On this program we play nine movements from the great piano trio literature and provide an entertaining, humorous narrative describing the music and its historical significance. In another performance I become "possessed" by the composer who tells the audience what was really going on when the music was written. Judy's playing cross-over music with Mark O'Connor and Wynton Marsalis is also influencing us."